


Scream Until Your Lungs Collapse

by Dikhotomia



Category: Control (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, I'll add more tags as i go, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mindfuck, Poison, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Psychological Horror, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:35:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26981503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dikhotomia/pseuds/Dikhotomia
Summary: The Ups and Downs of Working At The Federal Bureau of Control. (Sometimes days are worse then others, and sometimes you have many many days where nothing goes right.)Jesse gets used to it, and also doesn't.Or.Whumptober 2020
Relationships: Jesse Faden & Emily Pope, Jesse Faden & Polaris, Jesse Faden/Emily Pope
Comments: 2
Kudos: 77





	1. Winding Chains

**Author's Note:**

> Aannnd I'm back here dropping more stuff, I will drop a lot more stuff...because I've been replaying and ideas are here. Prompts will be in authors notes, this is Day 1-3 all in one neat little package. (Waking up Restrained/Kidnapped/Forced to their knees(held at gunpoint)
> 
> Shippy stuff will happen in later chapters.

_Jesse, wake up!_

Polaris thrashes, churning about like an angry sea in the back of her mind and through it memories cycle; the meeting she never made it to, the fight she had instead, then darkness. 

_Wake up!_

She does on a sharp inhale, eyes snapping open, wildly scanning the dark room she finds herself in. "What the?" she whispers, frowning at the vague memory pressing at the surface of her mind. She remembers with the firm clang of the restraints keeping her down, hands bound firmly behind her back.

_Right. The ambush....but who was it? Who ARE these people? Ugh figures the first time I have to leave on Bureau sanctioned business I end up in hot water..._

And the FBC had quite a few enemies, so it wasn't like she could narrow it down beyond throwing a proverbial dart at the board and guessing which one wanted her hide most. _As if I know anything important or worth while. Sure I might have read a lot of shit and Marshall did debrief me on a lot more but..._

_Well, even if I do know what they want from me I'm not going to give it to them anyway._

She feels the way Polaris reach, searching for signs of life, for anything familiar, for a way out. Jesse doesn't idle while she does, looking over her shoulder to assess her binds. Heavier then usual, and she traces each chain to where it's been bolted into the floor. "So they knew what they were dealing with," she whispers, pursing her lips. "Which means getting out of these restraints isn't going to be as easy as before." It wasn't as easy as breaking a zip-tie or sinking enough telekinetic force into the edge of a cuff to bend it enough to break it.

The mental dart thunks home solidly over the enigmatic blessed corporation and she frowns with it. They hadn't ever been so direct in their actions before, always preferring to send the FBC on wild goose chases beyond the one incident with America Overnight.

Jesse leaves the dart there, however, quietly pulling up every single shred of information she had on every single case involving blessed or one of the terrorists investigations had caught before everything went to a new level hell down there.

Which likely meant that the rangers who were with her are either dead, or in a room of their own, bound and waiting for whoever this was to come to them. _Shit_ , she thinks, slowly working her fingers in the confines of the restraints. _Shit. Shit. Shit._

Polaris flares in warning and Jesse stills, eyes snapping up to the door just as it opens a half dozen men all filing it with another woman at the back. 

_None of them look like I'd imagine anyone from an organization called 'blessed' to look, but I guess that's the point huh? Blend in, don't stand out._

_What do you think?_

She expects the agitated hum, expects the way Polaris continues her angry ocean-like churn.

_Yea, I don't like them either._

Jesse watches them all, the men in their cobbled together military gear and the woman in her slacks and shirt. She looks like an ordinary woman who walked in off the street, entirely out of place among all these men.

"It was right to assume trying to capture the Director of the FBC would be a difficult task, you killed a lot of my men," the ordinary woman starts, steepling her fingers together over her stomach. "But I suppose in the end we still managed to subdue you and your people. Though I can't say I'm happy about having to show so much of my hand."

It stirs up another memory from the confines of the haze; the chaos of battle, Jesse's voice carrying orders over the struggle. She remembers the noise, the noise that drilled into her skull and seized her body, interrupting movement and thought until the moment she blacked out.

_Must have been an altered item, one we can't let them keep._

"And?" Jesse asks, pursing her lips, entirely not in the mood to have a conversation with her kidnappers. She already knew it wasn't going to get anywhere. From where she was sitting no matter what she did or said the scales were tipped too far out of her favor, and any offer they could give her would so poorly benefit her she was better off telling them to go fuck themselves and dealing with the consequences of it.

"I'd like you to think of this as a kind of business meeting, Director," the woman replies, smiling. "I can make this mutually benefit us both if you're willing to cooperate."

_Yea, right. I give you what you want, you shoot me in the back the second you make good on your promise to 'let me go.'_

_Also what the fuck kind of 'business meeting' starts out with one party in chains? Wait, no I don't want to know the answer to that._

"Lady, if this is your idea of a 'business meeting' I'd hate to see what your idea of a 'cocktail party' is," she says, chewing at the inside of her lip. "I'm going to get straight to the point here because I had some place to be, and you've made me exceptionally late. How did you know, and what do you want?"

_So I can tell you no and we can get on with this._

Annoyance flashes across the other woman's features briefly, lighting up the green of her eyes and causing an involuntary tick in her jaw. She smooths it out as quickly as it had shown, exhaling slowly and replacing it all with a pleasant smile. "People talk, Director," she says, lifting a hand. "We've heard your agents whispering about 'reporting to the new Director' and how 'she's an outlier among the others.' It was easy to make an assumption from there, how did we know to be where we were? Simple, it's much the same reason. People talk."

Jesse scowls, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

_Marshall is going to be pissed. She's probably already pissed._

"You know, I could be a decoy," Jesse says after a moment, tilting her head slightly. "Just some random parautilitarian they plucked out of their forces to act as a stand in for the Director. After all, it's not like you've seen the new Director's face or anything."

That causes the kind of ripple she was hoping for, the men all exchanging glances and wondering if all their sacrifice was suddenly made pointless. It reaches the woman a few feet from her as well, her expression slipping again from it's pleasant mask.

Her eyes narrow. Jesse smiles, trying for something equally pleasant but landing just this side of mocking.

_I've got you there._

"Didn't think of that did you? Didn't think 'hey, you know, it might be pretty stupid to try and kidnap the Director of the FBC.' Do you really think they'd be stupid enough to not have some kind of plan in place for situations like this?"

_Yea, that's right, just keep bullshitting. I hope this doesn't get me shot. Oh this might get me shot._

_Marshall I really hope you've got a plan, I can only stall for so long._

It's a lot to put faith on someone who might not even have noticed she was gone, but at this point all she could do was hope that the ex-CIA agent would be able to track her down and upend this entire place in an attempt to find her. _Like a bunch of angry murder hornets_ , she thinks to herself, lip twitching with the humor of it. 

"Is something funny?" the woman says, her pleasant act crumbling at her feet.

"Nope," she replies, watching out of the corner of her eye as one of the men moves, metal glinting in the low light. 

"If she's not the Director we should just kill her like the others," he says moments before the cold metal of a gun-barrel presses against her temple. "Maybe she'll squeal before I shoot her."

"Is this your first time threatening someone?" Jesse asks, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. "Like, honestly threatening someone?"

The chair goes next, chains wrenching her shoulders as she lands hard on her knees. She cringes as pain lances up with it and Polaris lashes out, the metal of her restraints groaning. 

"Smith!" The woman snaps and the man stops and stands back, gun still aimed at Jesse's head.

One wrong move and she was going to end up a stain on the floor like Trench.

_So maybe mouthing off at the guys with guns wasn't a great idea. It was worth it though._

"I apologize for Smith's behavior," the woman says, closing the distance between them before bending down to her level. "He's always been a bit of a hot-head. I can admit my oversight, but with how desperately those rangers tried to keep you out of our hands I have to wonder."

"But that's the thing isn't it? People talk, but they also act and some of them act really _really well_."

All hell breaks loose in the next second, the door slamming open to reveal Marshall and a team of heavily armed rangers. None of the people in the room with her last long, the Rangers coming through too fast and too aggressively to give them time to react. 

"Director," Marshall says, striding through the chaos like it was a walk in the park. "Are you alright?"

"Miraculously," she replies, leaning to one side as the older woman kneels by her, keys jingling moments before the restraints fall away. "You had me a little worried for a bit there."

Marshall snorts, rising up to her feet and offering a hand. "You had me worried from the moment you decided you wanted to play bait instead of let someone else do it. You know how dangerous this was? You could have gotten killed."

"I could have."

_I almost did._

She reaches up, taking Marshall's offered hand and letting the other woman haul her up to her feet. "The altered item is here somewhere. I can't touch it though, it...emits some kind of noise that scrambles paranatural abilities, It was like I had a seizure when they used it earlier. I'm still all messed up."

"You are the Director," the woman rasps, held down by one of the rangers. "How-?"

Jesse gestures and the service weapon jumps back into her hand, rebuilding as she raises it. "Like I said, people act," she replies, resting the barrel against her forehead, finger laid against the side of the barrel. "You thought you had me, but in reality it was all an act to get you to come out of hiding."

"You willingly put yourself in danger to catch us?"

"Because I have a team I can trust," she replies, pulling the gun away. "Going through a little pain and a little panic was worth it if it meant you and your altered item are now off the streets."

She feels Marshall beside her, standing close as if sensing the way the world starts to tilt a little as the adrenaline from the entire situation begins to wear off. She covers her face with her free hand, squeezing her eyes shut until light sparks behind them. "Find the altered item," she says, peering through the space between her fingers. "I don't care if you have to flip this place upside down, we're not leaving here without it."

"How will we know?" one of the rangers not occupied with a terrorist asks.

"Any of you paranaturally inclined?" Jesse asks in return, rubbing her hand down her face.

"I am," another replies, tilting her head. "Is the report true then ma'am?"

"Yea," Jesse replies, stepping through the wall of bodies between her and the door, Marshall at her back. "You'll know when you find it, the second you hear a high pitched frequency alert the rest of the team and get out of there."

She leaves with that, pausing briefly to let Marshall take the lead.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Marshall asks once they're outside, both enjoying the fresh air and the distant noise of the city. 

"Maybe not," Jesse replies, leaning against one of the FBC's cars. "My head is a mess and now that I'm on my feet again I feel weird, everything's sore and tingling like my whole body has been asleep for hours. That....item it...it was like a million tiny needles stabbing in everywhere and tearing chunks of me out. It fucked with me, with Polaris."

"....How is Polaris?" Marshall ventures, frowning.

"Oh she's very upset. But I think she's okay other than that." Just shaken, like she was.

"Next time we're using a decoy," Marshall says, leaning by her. "The FBC can't afford to lose another Director so soon, especially not one like you."

Jesse snorts. "You know you can just say you like me," she says, smile wry. "I'll try not to act too shocked."

Marshall side eyes her.

Jesse slips away into the front-seat of the SUV, sinking against the leather and closing her eyes, hearing the exact moment the team returns with the terrorists and the altered item.

_My 'to do list' keeps getting longer._


	2. A Moment In A Lifetime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It only takes a second for everything to go wrong and Jesse only has that second to react, shouting a warning to the team with her as the floor cracks and the house trembles underneath their feet. It only takes a second for everything to go wrong, but it feels like an eternity passes as the hallway falls apart around them, walls crumbling as the floor gives out in chunks, revealing nothing but a yawning darkness. It sends the few of them in the hallway scrambling for the nearby control point, the rangers and scientists standing around and inside it all looking up in mild horror as Jesse yells at them to run._
> 
> _"Jesse-!"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 4 (Collapsed Building) and Day 5 (Failed Escape/Rescue)
> 
> I took some liberties with some of the medical stuff that goes on because Paranatural bullshit and other reasons and we'll leave it at that lmao.

It only takes a second for everything to go wrong and Jesse only has that second to react, shouting a warning to the team with her as the floor cracks and the house trembles underneath their feet. It only takes a second for everything to go wrong, but it feels like an eternity passes as the hallway falls apart around them, walls crumbling as the floor gives out in chunks, revealing nothing but a yawning darkness. It sends the few of them in the hallway scrambling for the nearby control point, the rangers and scientists standing around and inside it all looking up in mild horror as Jesse yells at them to run.

"Jesse-!"

Emily's voice cuts her to the bone, the sound of her name a frantic, desperate thing that sends her turning around fast enough her ankle protests the movement. She has a second to see the floor as it falls out from underneath Emily's feet, the other woman's eyes widening as she reaches out for her-

Jesse launches forward, reaching back fingers brushing before the floor is gone, taking the both of them with it. The free-fall is unnerving, a weightless sensation she had experienced before in moments she'd leapt off high places in the house, willingly letting herself plummet only to slow her descent at the last few feet to land safely.

She didn't have the luxury of a controlled descent this time, twisting in the air to grab Emily's wrist mid helpless flounder. "I've got you!" she shouts, pulling Emily closer towards her, letting the other woman cling onto her before she stops their free-fall, power called up once again from the space she keeps it laying in wait.

For a few moments they drift, Emily gasping for air and trembling against her, swearing a blue streak under her breath.

_Unfortunately, going up isn't exactly a-_

There's pain, something too heavy and fast moving colliding with her back and interrupting her concentration, sparking starburst patterns behind her eyes, then there's nothing, the darkness swallowing up her consciousness faster then she can fight against it.

"--sse"

She's shaking, or being shook, body shifting slightly, something warm and insistent pressing against her shoulder.

"Plea--Jess-!"

The voice is muffled, coming to her in short fits and starts that barely breaks by the haze that permeates her sleeping mind. She feels like she needs to wake up though, feels like there's something incredibly wrong that she can't afford to sleep through. 

"Jesse, Jesse please I need you to wake up, please!"

She does, not at all willingly, not at all happily, every inch of her body screaming in protest if she so much as twitches. It takes her a second to come to fully, something hard digging into her chest and solar plexus that makes it a little hard to breathe. 

But it's nothing compare to the absolute hellfire of white hot pain that burns in her leg, knee to ankle nothing but an open nerve. It's that that gets her to move, inhaling sharply and jerking up, the involuntary movement doing nothing but making the pain worse.

" _Fuck_!" she hisses, shuddering with it, teeth grit. "Fuck Fuck _Fuck!_ "

"Jesse!" warm hands find her face, fingers soothingly touching her jaw and her cheeks. "Jesse, hey, hey look at me."

She does, eyes dropping from the rubble laying around them to the woman underneath her. "Emily-- _shit_ \--are you--" the answer, she knows, is probably not. Emily looks as bad as she feels, dust caked to her face and clothes and blood staining the corner of her mouth and her temple. 

"I've had better days," Emily replies, breathing a little labored. "I'm pretty sure I broke a few ribs and my head is screaming at me. Jesse, your leg--"

"Yea, yea I know. I can feel it," she replies, not wanting to look back. "Feels like it got crushed."

Emily cringes, and for a second her eyes drift down the line of her body. "It's too dark in here to tell, but from the looks of it it's very possible."

This time it's Jesse's turn to cringe, hissing when an attempt to twitch her toes is meant with movement and another shock of agony. "Well," she wheezes, voice wrung out of her. "It's still intact...I think, something responded when I tried to move it."

_But it sure as hell hurt like a bitch._

_Next question; where the fuck is here?_

She breathes through the splintering pain as it radiates through her leg and the rest of her body, eyes flicking around to try and find their bearings. A whole lot of rubble and a thin dusting of red sand.

_Oh. We fell to the foundation, great._

Jesse doesn't ask if the day could get any worse, because she figures it absolutely could and knowing her luck? It probably would.

"Em, can you move?" she asks a second later, pushing herself up more on her hands. "You're the only one who can go anywhere right now," she adds, forcing a smile. _Because I sure can't until someone else finds us._

"I...yes, I think so." She's slow to do it, painstakingly pulling herself out from underneath Jesse in what little space their rubble cage offers. "Shit," she whispers, pressing a hand to her side. "Ah, yes I definitely broke a few ribs." She pauses for a long moment, squeezing her eyes shut and focusing on breathing, carefully pulling her knees underneath her.

_Probably can add concussion on to that_ , Jesse thinks, pursing her lips. In hindsight Emily probably shouldn't be moving either, but the pressing nature of their situation meant one of them had to go try and find help, because by now there would be a medical team dispatched down to the foundation with rangers scouting a head to clear the path. 

"Is your HRA okay?" Jesse asks next, pulling her one good leg up to use her knee as added support. On the surface it looked okay and since Emily was still herself...well, it kind of answered the question, didn't it?

"If there's one thing Dr. Darling did right, it was making these things durable," Emily mutters, running her fingers over the device still strapped to her chest to make sure nothing was damaged. 

"What--happened exactly? Apparently I slowed our fall just long enough that when we hit the ground it wasn't as hard as it could have been..." Jesse says, frowning. 

"A piece of...I assume ceiling, collided with us and we fell after you lost consciousness. _Fortunately_ we were closer to the ground than I originally assumed, _unfortunately_ it wasn't close enough to prevent injury...but in my opinion it could have been worse."

_Just another day at the Bureau_ , Jesse thinks, _injury is better than death._

"How's your back?" Jesse asks next, smile turning wry when Emily cuts her a look out of the corner of one eye.

"One rather large, very sore bruise. Likely the same as yours," she replies, gingerly attempting to rise to her feet. She doesn't get very far before her balance wavers and she ends up back on her knees, hissing in pain and cradling her side once again. "I can't, too dizzy."

"That's fine, don't--don't strain yourself," she says, reaching out slightly to touch Emily's shoulder. "You probably have a concussion, but you know that...because of course you'd know that."

"Yes," Emily replies, running a hand through her hair. "Yes."

Jesse watches the way her hair falls, it's normally perfect style in complete disarray. A few blonde strands brush against her temples and across her forehead as Emily presses fingers to the bridge of her nose and _breathes._

_Must be nauseous too,_ Jesse surmises, struggling to sit up a little bit more while her injured leg spits fire at her. She pauses, shakes, grinding her teeth until an ache starts in her jaw. _This was a bad idea right from the start._

She remembers the conversation from that morning, a bunch of scientists and rangers all reporting strange tremors in this area of the house. There had been a considerable amount of hemming and hawing before they even came to the decision to come down here with the hopes that establishing a control point would stabilize things.

_It worked, but it also didn't work at all._

Now they were stuck, and there was no telling what might happen. No way of knowing if more tremors would occur that would disturb the rubble above them and crush them both to death.

"Maybe us coming down here wasn't a good idea," Emily whispers, clearly having come to the same conclusion. "This isn't the first time a section of the house collapsed into the Foundation."

"I remember. I found the journals those poor bastards kept while they were trapped down here, not exactly good bed time material," Jesse mutters, looking back at the slab of stone keeping _her_ trapped. Technically she could launch it off her, just like she could all of the rubble, but she had no idea what else was balancing on it or how it had all fallen.

If she pulled one wrong stone, it'd be just like if another tremor rolled through. 

They were dead.

For a while they both fall into silence, Jesse prodding at what she could without bringing it all down on them, pausing whenever the pain got to be too great.

"Hey, Em," she says as she turns back around, noticing the way the other woman has started to nod off. "Don't fall asleep on me."

Emily sucks in a sharp breath, twitching her head up and blinking. "You know, you'd think for someone who knows about concussions and a bit about how to treat them, the basics of 'don't fall asleep' would be common sense for you right?" Emily says, shaking her head slightly. 

"You'd think," Jesse replies. "But it's different when you actually experience it."

"I-well, I work here, so I can't say I never thought I would...I just..." Emily frowns, letting her words trail off.

"I get it," Jesse says, reaching out to touch her shoulder again. "You just didn't expect it to happen so soon after finishing your field training."

"No, but I should have and I think distantly I did, I knew." Emily looks up at her, bangs falling in her face more. "I'm sorry, Jesse, If I had moved a little faster-"

"No," Jesse says, cutting her off. "Don't you dare blame yourself for this. It was just shit luck."

She watches the way Emily's expression shifts, brows knitting together, lips thinning. 

"I know what you're thinking, Pope and I swear-"

Emily looks down, a tiny smile ghosting her features. "Okay, Jesse, okay. You're right."

Jesse shifts a little as Emily moves closer to her, folding against her side and offering her support she desperately needed. She wasn't feeling as well as she had been, and her eyes dip to the stone and the leg it still holds hostage. 

_I've lost a lot of blood,_ she thinks, looking at the way the sand has turned darker with her blood. _Fuck today._

"Jesse," Emily says, drawing her attention. "We'll get out of this."

"Yea," Jesse replies, laying her head against the other woman's shoulder. "I know."

They'd gotten through worse.

_Just, you know, I wasn't trapped under a fucking rock._

The silence settles again, and she keeps a careful eye on Emily, watching the way the other woman retreats into herself, lips twitching with whatever she's thinking about. It's Jesse who drifts this time, eyes threatening to slip closed. She's cold, she's hot and the longer she sits the harder it gets to think.

She comes back to fingers on her cheek and then on her forehead, Emily's voice a concerned hum somewhere above her. Above? She opens her eyes to the sight of Emily's slacks, her mind sluggishly processing the fact the other woman must have moved her to lay down on her lap, cheek pressed against her thighs.

Emily threads her fingers through her hair, muttering. Jesse thinks it's probably shock, thinks that she's probably lost enough blood at this point it's teetering on dangerous and the pound of her heart in her ears tells her as much. 

The darkness swallows her again.

"--aden--Pope!"

"Marshall?!"

Something shifts and it jerks Jesse back to reality quicker then she expects, eyes snapping open and body twitching to an alert panic she realizes a second later she doesn't need. 

"Marshall, we're here!"

The rubble shifts, and Jesse squints as Emily leans over her to shield her from the dust.

"Hold on!" Marshall shouts, voice muffled behind all the stone. "We're going to get you out!"

"Be careful!" Emily calls back. "Jesse's leg is caught underneath one of the rocks!"

She hears Marshall swear, then nothing beyond the muffled cadence of her voice as she shouts orders.

They can't do anything but wait, listening in tense silence as the debris is shifted off them one bit at a time. Emily's fingers tighten against her shoulder and Jesse shifts her head enough to look, watching the way the slabs keeping them trapped shift alarmingly with the motions.

A moment later several rangers squeeze through a hole they had made nearby, talking among themselves as they try to figure out how to get them out. Jesse misses bits and pieces of it, only aware of how Emily holds her and the noise she hears.

"You alive, Faden?"

She blinks, confronted with Marshall's boots. "Barely," she manages, licking her lips. "Did you get me unstuck yet?"

"We're about to," Marshall replies. "This is gonna hurt."

"Yea. It sure the fuck is."

Jesse blacks out almost immediately after Marshall and the other rangers start to move the stone pinning her.

When she wakes up next, it's in the makeshift medical wing. The cot a damn sight more comfortable then the ground she had been on previously. Emily lies on the cot just beside hers, head bandaged and midsection braced.

Emily smiles a little at her, tired and Jesse smiles back. Eventually she looks away and down at her leg where it sits, full of pins to keep the bones set and a bunch of bandages to keep her from moving it too much.

She goes back to sleep, relief settling in her chest.


	3. They Put Something Inside Of Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _'Blow up the nail' was possibly both the best and the worst order Trench could have given her. It was one thing to keep the hiss from getting it, it was another to have the unknown factor of what would happen to the house when she hit the trigger on the C4. It hadn't stopped her from doing it as soon as she found Hiss in the Foundation, her decision made with the trust that the current Director would be able to handle whatever situation arose from it._
> 
> _'The situation' as it turned out, was she had been too close, the hiss breathing down her neck and forcing her to make choices she normally wouldn't ever make. Damn what happened to her, all that mattered was the future of the FBC-"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 6 (Get it Out/Stop, Please) and Day 7 (Support)
> 
> So this is me saying 'to hell with canon I'm doing it my way' and why Marshall has been showing up in my various post canon fics and will continue to show up in them.
> 
> Also the narration in this is all over and kind of nonsensical, but what do you expect when you're writing around the Hiss Incantation???

'Blow up the nail' was possibly both the best and the worst order Trench could have given her. It was one thing to keep the hiss from getting it, it was another to have the unknown factor of what would happen to the house when she hit the trigger on the C4. It hadn't stopped her from doing it as soon as she found Hiss in the Foundation, her decision made with the trust that the current Director would be able to handle whatever situation arose from it.

'The situation' as it turned out, was she had been too close, the hiss breathing down her neck and forcing her to make choices she normally wouldn't ever make. Damn what happened to her, all that mattered was the future of the FBC-

_We will build you until nothing remains-_

Marshall squeezes her eyes shut, pressing fingers to the corners of them and gritting her teeth. The noise is incessant now, prickling inside of her skull and scraping against bone and nerve. She sits against the base of the nail, gun in hand and HRA a useless weight against her chest, broken from the explosion.

While it had taken all the Hiss in the room out with her, she couldn't escape the blood red cast of it. Couldn't escape from the fingers pushing through the edges of her mind and trying to take hold. 

_A copy of a copy of a copy--_

There's no shutting it up, no leaving the room and getting away from it. No going to some safe place and quieting the noise of her mind. She couldn't leave something that was borrowing into her mind, borrowing deeper and deeper and deeper. She wondered how long it had taken the others who had succumbed to this to, wondered how long each of them fought back or if they had just been overwhelmed immediately like she had seen happen to some.

Taken like it was nothing, like their mental defense was little more then a wet paper bag the Hiss shredded with all the force of a swung blade.

_The hole in your room is a hole in you._

_You came and we let you in through the hole in you._

_You have always been here, the only child._

"Goddamn you're all annoying," she mutters, looking up at the soldiers slowly advancing on her, whispering. "There's no way in hell you're going to add me to your collection."

_You gave us the permission in your regulations._

_We wait in the stains._

She can feel it trying to rearrange her, twisting up in her mind and digging, shifting and changing. It presses, weight and sound screaming in her ears and deafening her to her own thoughts, stripping her down from human to what it wants her to be bit by bit. A vessel, another to add to the sound. 

Her fingers press to the sides of her head, palms pressed over her ears even if she knows it's not going to work. She can still hear them, the sound resounding from inside her skull and outside, a double frequency that made her feel as though it held her in a vice grip. 

Pressing. Pressing.

**_Pressing._ **

_You want this to be true--_

_You are home--_

She's slipping, the webs holding her to her own body starting to fray and snap, the sensation of a mind and soul giving way to be filled with something spitting and malicious making her sick.

Home? 

Red like an open heart, a chest cavity split to see the organs inside as they work. To see them rearranged into something alien--

_Get it out get it out get it out--_

_Stop--_

A gun shot cracks off the walls and Marshall's head shoots up with the noise, inhaling. Her own rifle is brought to bare almost immediately, aiming down the sights even with the hiss screaming at her. She can feel it try to pull her up like a puppet on strings, can feel it try to use her as something she's not. She resists it, coiling her muscles and remaining where she's seated in the sand, seeing double through the red that still permeates her vision.

_Bang. Bang. Bang!_

A stalagmite soars by, a hiss impaled on the sharp edge of it, both ending up pinned to the cave wall somewhere behind her with a resounding crack. She sees little more than a blurr of motion, the beginning rattle of gunfire snuffed out quick enough she begins to wonder if she's hallucinating.

"Marshall!"

Except. She's not.

"Faden?" she sounds as splintered as she feels, her voice a shuddering thing she barely recognizes as her own. "What are you doing down here?"

Jesse comes through the red an inky darkness stained a shade of spilled blood. She looks worried, maybe even a little angry. "The Board," she replies, bending down, eyes intent on hers. She's coiled, ready to move if she has to. "They mentioned an Astral Bleed and something about a nail. You blew it up, didn't you?"

It meant she had still heard a part of her mind over the hotline, the part of her that was still human yelling out into the void and wondering if anyone would hear. "Trench's orders," she replies, squeezing her eyes shut against the scream.

"You know Trench was the one that let the Hiss in in the first place, right?" 

She didn't and the sense of fury that rises with the knowledge is something she takes a moment to process. "I knew he had been acting weird in the days leading up to the lock-down, both him and Darling. The fucking idiot," she mutters, shaking her head. "He knew how dangerous the projector was-"

"The Hiss messed with his head," Jesse cuts in, reaching out. "They twisted his sense of control into something twice as bad as it normally was, it made him distrust everyone. You, Darling, and especially Hedron, which he thought was going to take over the Bureau...so he let the Hiss in to counteract it."

"Idiot," she says again. "The absolute fucking idiot. One of the last things he told me to do was destroy the nail so the Hiss couldn't get it."

"It just caused a massive Astral Bleed instead that nearly tore the house apart," Jesse rebuffs, frowning. "But I fixed that, and the Hiss. Now I have to save you."

"I thought you couldn't save people who had been corrupted by the Hiss," Marshall says, having fully been ready to earn a bullet to the head. In fact she almost encouraged it, aware she was little more than a danger to the House and the people still alive and sane within it. 

"You're not fully," Jesse replies, two fingers pressed to the HRA still strapped to her chest. "Something in there is still working. While they're in your head, you're still here too."

"You can't save everyone, Faden," she replies, scowling.

"I haven't been able to save everyone," Jesse says, one of the younger woman's hands swimming into her line of vision. Her fingers are almost ice cold where they rest against her temple and forehead.

"But I have to try again, I can't go back to Emily and the others without having tried to save you."

_Get it out--_

**_We stand around while you dream._ **

**_You can almost hear our words but you forget._ **

_I'd rather die then be a puppet to these things-_

The world screams, going black then blindingly red, ripping apart like dye in water or flesh and muscle from bone. She isn't sure where to go or what to do, isn't sure what to reach out to while she feels like she's being sawed in half down the middle. She thinks she might have yelled, she thinks she lashes out, a hand catching flesh and scouring. She thinks she hears Jesse hiss and push forward more.

It's agonizing, feeling as all the things that had been rearranged get put back to how they should be, as the fingers and the threads that had taken hold and tangled inside of her get pulled out and cut away. She thrashes and struggles, gripping onto whatever she can grab hold of. She pulls apart and comes back together.

Then there's nothing.

It takes her a while to come back, filling back into her body and her mind like water poured into a cup. Her head throbs to the beat of a splitting migraine and the rest of her body refuses to work no matter how hard she tries.

But she's moving, can feel her feet dragging along coupled with the sensation of drifting along. She opens her eyes and nearly stumbles, trying to get her feet underneath her, leaning heavily on the body holding her up.

"Marshall?" 

She looks up slightly, catching sight of a familiar jawline and red hair. She doesn't try to speak, unsure if her tongue would even cooperate, instead allowing a noise that sounds in cadence to the name she thinks.

A second later she notices the bruises and the bloody marks on the Director's cheek.

Jesse says nothing about them, simply pausing to wait while Marshall steadies herself, one hand still pressed to the younger woman's shoulder. 

"If you had been a few minutes later," Marshall starts, accepting the help Jesse offers as they continue their way back to the ladder she can see a few feet away. "...I guess I can say something of your sense of punctuality, Faden."

"I don't want to think about being a few minutes later," Jesse remarks, stopping. "Because I'm pretty sure that'd have been the worst fight of my life. You think you can climb up?"

"Yea," Marshall replies, looking up at the unnatural light filtering in from above. "Just gonna take me a few minutes."

"Take your time," Jesse says, glancing back down the way they came. "We're safe for now."

As safe as any of them ever were in this madhouse.


	4. Echoplex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Run!" she yells at the scientists with her. The rangers had already fallen, and she casts a glance at them as she passes, anxiety welling hot and metallic behind her teeth. She runs with them, stumbling and tripping over uneven ground, the sand almost betraying her with every step._
> 
> _She knows these things are here for her, Jesse's warning ringing like a brand in the back of her mind._
> 
> _"If they're here for me-"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 8 (abandoned/Isolation) day 9 ('run!')
> 
> This starts off really fluffy and ends so horrendously bleak and I'm only slightly sorry for it. (Inspired entirely by a theory my friend [Ashtree11](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashtree11/pseuds/Ashtree11) dropped on me the other night.)

"The board isn't happy with us poking around in the Foundation," Jesse tells her that morning, the two of them sitting inches from each other in the board room, files and papers scattered around them. Jesse looks at home among it all now, mug cradled in her hands. "Especially you."

Emily blinks, eyebrows raising as she processes the warning behind the nature of the Director's tone. "Oh?" While she has absolutely no plans on stopping her research of the Foundation and the nail itself, she takes into consideration everything Jesse had uncovered while looking; all of Dr. Ash's notes, the recordings, Northmoor's letter. The board didn't like Ash either, and now here she was, walking right in his footsteps.

But Jesse wasn't like Northmoor, in fact the other woman was a complete polar opposite, warning her instead of telling her to stop what she was doing. 

"Yea," Jesse mutters, taking a sip of coffee and staring off at the white boards at the back of the room, hiding where the two of them often ended up sleeping if they weren't in Jesse's office. "They told me to get rid of you," she adds, eyes flicking back to her. Emily's own dip to the gauntlet peeking out from underneath the strange sleeves of Jesse's chosen outfit, alien material glinting in the light.

"Well that's ominous," Emily says, meeting Jesse's eyes again. "Now I'm even more curious to find out what it is they're so determined to keep hidden."

Jesse's brow pinches and her lips purse as she leans back in her chair, folding her hands across her stomach. Emily knows she's worried, suddenly caught between telling her to stop and letting her continue.

"Jesse," she starts, leaning forward instead, clipboard abandoned on the table next to her. "I can take care of myself, I've been at this for a long time."

"But the board hasn't had a target painted on your head until now," Jesse rebukes. "Up here they can't really do anything except bother me, but when you're down there you're so close to the Astral Plane....I just..."

"I know," Emily replies, straightening. "I'm pretty much standing at their doorstep asking for trouble. But we have to keep looking, because if we don't eventually someone else might after we're gone...and it'll be the same thing all over again."

Someone was always going to have a target painted on their back, but the Director wasn't always going to be as willing to ignore things as Jesse was. She knew for a fact Jesse had no interest in letting the board jerk her around like previous, but Emily also knew that the Foundation probably used to look different before the Astral Bleed incident.

Jesse's jaw ticks and she opens her mouth to say something a second before shutting it again, sighing through her nose. "Yea, you're right," she sighs out, rubbing her hands down her face. "I just worry is all."

"I'll be fine, Jesse," she says, reaching out to touch the other woman's forearm. "I'll take precautions and as soon as I feel like something is even slightly off we'll pull out, okay?"

"I'm going to hold you to that," Jesse says as they both stand and Emily lets her into her space willingly, smiling as Jesse's hand rests against her cheek and her forehead presses to hers. "If you need me..."

"I'll call you," Emily finishes. "I promise."

\------

_"Run!" she yells at the scientists with her. The rangers had already fallen, and she casts a glance at them as she passes, anxiety welling hot and metallic behind her teeth. She runs with them, stumbling and tripping over uneven ground, the sand almost betraying her with every step._

_She knows these things are here for her, Jesse's warning ringing like a brand in the back of her mind._

_"If they're here for me-"_

\------

They were. 

It had forced her into a corner, stuck between the world she knew and the Astral Plane. She hid on the precipice of it, pressed underneath an outcropping of stone and staring out into the white void she knew spelled nothing but a disastrous end. It's an awe inspiring sight, knowing just what it was she was looking at, a cast up of her gaze catching structures far off she knew belonged to the Plane itself.

Huge, monolithic and nonsensical in nature.

She tries to make sense of any of it, picking apart and rebuilding everything in her mind over and over and over. She's no closer to an answer for any of her questions by the time she hears once of the mimics nearby then she was when she first got here.

Her eyes track the mimic as it walks by, and it takes her a second to notice it's made from the very same material the structures are.

_So are these structures living? No, it has to be that the board just...makes them out of the structures?_

Maybe, she frowns and makes a note of it, sticking it somewhere in the back of her mind to focus on later when she wasn't in so much danger. When she wasn't alone with a group of entities that might very well shoot her on sight like they did the rangers that tried to protect her.

_Jesse,_ she thinks, the woman's name held at the tip of her tongue. _Wherever you are I could use some help._

A test of an ongoing hypothesis--

\--a desperate attempt to reach out in the hopes it actually works.

\-------

The mimics disappear after a time, their presence replaced with an unnerving silence so complete Emily wonders if she's somehow gone deaf. 

A voice like static over a radio hums out in the distance like an indecipherable warning. Droning, droning, droning.

\------

She leaves her hiding spot well after her legs have fallen asleep and her mind has shifted from theories to a desire to leave. She's still cautious about it, easing herself out from underneath the structure and peering around it, searching for any signs of life. 

The silence persists, and every step she takes is muted. 

_What is this? Some sort of effect the foundation has on people?_

She's not sure how long she wanders, navigating the twists and the turns of the Foundation's many pathways, constantly finding herself starting right at the same spot she had thought she left previously. At times she thinks she sees thinks, a person, the Hiss, all lingering out of the corner of her eye and gone as soon as she turns to look at them.

No one was ever there.

So she keeps circling, chipping marks into stone to try and find a proper path. No matter how many paths she takes, it always leads back to the same room and she always finds herself staring out at the abyss; progressing slowly from fascinated to angry.

The silence is heavy, dragging her down and making itself at home in her mind. Her steps still make no noise, each strike of her rock against another doesn't echo. 

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

_A part of her thinks she may go mad down here--_

She was used to isolation, used to being alone for long periods of time doing nothing but work. Running experiments or filling out pages of notes, a marker squeaking against a whiteboard, the shuffle of papers, a distant voice in the hallway as someone passed by.

She was used to isolation, but this was a new kind. 

_You've been abandoned--_

Emily ignores the voice that sets in, shuns it even while it whispers horrible things to her in the moments she has to stop; exhausted and starving.

Jesse never comes.

_She keeps hoping, even as she keeps searching for a way out._


	5. In Cold Silences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Jesse knows death like a distant sense of déjà vu, like a dream that clings to her after she wakes up, shaken and sweating. She can remember each, bones shattering from a fall, skull split underneath thrown debris. Bullets that have found homes in organs too vital to limp away from. She thinks she's died more times than she can count, but after each she wakes again, standing at the center of a control point with a distant sense of confusion._
> 
> _Jesse knows death. It's intimate and cold and isolating, she knows what it's like to lay in a pool of her own blood with broken bones and agony, waiting as her life drains away in fractions. Feels as her body cools and her nerves die in increments, darkness eating away at the edges of her vision._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 10 (Blood Loss/Internal Bleeding/Trail Of Blood) Day 11 (Defiance/Struggling) Day 12 (Broken Bones/Broken Trust) Day 13 ALT Prompt 3. Comfort (AKA Polaris tries but it doesn't go as well as she wants it)
> 
> MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH (Though it's only temporary.)

Jesse knows death like a distant sense of déjà vu, like a dream that clings to her after she wakes up, shaken and sweating. She can remember each, bones shattering from a fall, skull split underneath thrown debris. Bullets that have found homes in organs too vital to limp away from. She thinks she's died more times than she can count, but after each she wakes again, standing at the center of a control point with a distant sense of confusion. 

Jesse knows death. It's intimate and cold and isolating, she knows what it's like to lay in a pool of her own blood with broken bones and agony, waiting as her life drains away in fractions. Feels as her body cools and her nerves die in increments, darkness eating away at the edges of her vision.

This time she fights, a violent trail of blood left in her wake as she stumbles and crawls, dizzy and sick. She fights the cold claws that sink into her skin and try to drag her down, the ache and the stiffness that seizes around her lungs and threatens to strangle her. It's her defiance, her final thought to spit in the face of the thing that had claimed her so many times before.

_You can't keep me. You haven't been able to before, you won't be able to now._

She laughs slightly as she leans against the wall, ribs and busted arm aching. "I'd say arguing with an unseen force is a sure sign of insanity, but we're long past that aren't we?" she mutters, closing her eyes as Polaris stirs from within, curling blue and fleeting around the edges of her vision. She offers comfort where Jesse would otherwise have none. 

_Where the hell is that control point?_

Slowly she moves on, shoulder and hand pressed against the wall as she moves. She knows she leaves more blood in her wake, smearing it across the stone, dripping more from the wound burrowed into her side.

_**< You must survive/live/continue your fight. You are not done/finished/with your assigned task.>** _

She wants to tell them to fuck off, tell them that she's working on it. 

It takes her a moment to realize she's standing in the Astral Plane, eyes focused on the Pyramid at it's center. Red encroaches at the edges of the blinding white, tearing through like paint in water, churning in fractal patterns that make no sense to the human mind.

_**< Your defiance/struggle/spirit is to be respected Director. You did not listen/follow/our orders.>** _

Jesse tries to remember which, her expression twisting into displeasure she rarely lets herself show in their presence. "You gotta be more specific," she drawls, thinking by now death has claimed her wherever it was she'd finally fallen. "You've given me a lot of tasks."

_**< We have taken care/fixed/your blunder. Do not worry/concern yourself/further with it.>** _

She gets dropped back into her body a moment later, laying on her back and staring listlessly up at the ceiling. She thinks she can see it shift, thinks she can see the walls move like they're breathing.

Her own breathing is erratic compared, short desperate gasps that do little to alleviate the tingle in her fingers and her toes. 

Polaris shifts, spreading warmth where there's cold, whispering low. 

Jesse coughs, wet and heaving, feeling as much as hearing something wet and rattling in her chest, blood warm where it spills down the sides of her face. "Fuck," she rasps, struggling in inhale past the blood welling in her lungs and her throat. She doesn't have the energy to try and roll over, vision swimming even as the world spins lazily on it's axis above her.

She struggles to think past the gray haze that settles in the back of her mind, what did the board mean? What task was it that she had failed that would force them to intervene? 

It hits her as her heartbeat goes from erratic to slow and stuttering, as her breath shortens and her fingers and toes numb. 

_Emily,_ she thinks, fighting against the desire to close her eyes and sleep. _They were talking about Emily...she's in the Foundation...._

Polaris rolls and hums, soothing her when she tries to move, fighting against every inch of her dying body in an attempt to rise to her feet again. _I know I'm not use but I have to go...I said I would protect her-_

But how can she when she can't move? How can she with her consciousness fading, blood haloing out around her like a target. She succumbs bit by bit, vision blurring, graying and darkening, heartbeat slowing to still with her breathing--

She's standing at the center of a control point, hand extended over the feeling of warm power thrumming at it's core. The déjà vu sensation filters over her like something cold and deep, reminding her distantly of something urgent.

Something she has to tend to immediately.

_I died again, didn't I?_

Jesse turns, greeted immediately with the long trail of blood from the end of the hall to nearby where she stands. _Right here._

She goes.


	6. Bridges Burning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _They get lost, and it's the first in a downward spiral of bad. The alleyways they walk through have seemingly stretched out and become something resembling the Ashtray Maze back at the house, some turns lead to a dead end, others back to the same place they had just been. There's a dozen of them, all pressed in around her, shoulder to shoulder._
> 
> _"Where now?" one ranger asks, glancing between the two pathway stretched out in front of them._
> 
> _"This is not how I remember these alleys," another comments and Jesse can feel him pressed too close beside her, his shoulder digging slightly into her own. "It's like a fun-house maze now."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 14 (Branding/Fire) Day 15 (Possession) Day 16 (Hallucinations/Implied Forced To Beg) and Day 20 (Lost)

They get lost, and it's the first in a downward spiral of bad. The alleyways they walk through have seemingly stretched out and become something resembling the Ashtray Maze back at the house, some turns lead to a dead end, others back to the same place they had just been. There's a dozen of them, all pressed in around her, shoulder to shoulder.

"Where now?" one ranger asks, glancing between the two pathway stretched out in front of them.

"This is not how I remember these alleys," another comments and Jesse can feel him pressed too close beside her, his shoulder digging slightly into her own. "It's like a fun-house maze now."

"It may be the effect of one of the Altered Items," Marshall comments from her other side, standing a bit a head of her. She's quietly attentive, eyes never stopping in their continued search for potential danger. "After all this is one of the black market sellers."

"That we haven't been able to catch until now," Jesse cuts in, raising her eyebrows. "Which, if you ask me, is pretty damn suspicious." 

_Which means we've totally just walked right into a trap...and now we're stuck in another crazy maze with no Old Gods Of Asgard to help us out._

Polaris stirs and flickers, reaching out past the confines of her mind and past everyone with her. Jesse waits, leaving the people with her to their conversation. It's low and droning, each ranger offering an opinion on the next direction to talk or talking about what they think has happened.

 _We're fucking lost is what happened_ , Jesse thinks, frowning. _The house is easier to navigate, and that's saying something._

_Wait-_

The world around them shifts and shimmers, distorting briefly to expose the truth hidden underneath. For a second they're all standing in the middle of an abandoned warehouse, shelves lining the entire floor, stocked high with boxes.

Then it's gone, the alleyway they believed they were standing in fitting back over the real world with an almost seamless clarity.

"A mass hallucination?" Marshall murmurs from beside her, hands curling more securely around her rifle. "We have to find the source," she adds, then pauses, looking to her. "Faden, can you try to break through this?"

_I can try, but trying is about all any of us can do at this point._

She nods, not so subtly waving the ranger pressed to her side back as she turns in their confined space. Do they just think it's confined? Have their minds been tricked fully into believing what they see is in fact a perfect alleyway constructed of concrete and unforgiving brick pressing in on them?

Because it certainly has more substance then a mirage...

The second on the list of 'bad things' happens when her fingers come in contact with the stone. The pain is immediate and excruciating, something white hot and flaying ever nerve ending she possesses in her hand. She jerks back with the scent of burnt flesh in her nose and her hand an open nerve of agony.

_Bad idea, that was a very bad idea!_

"Faden!" Marshall is there almost immediately, grabbing her wrist to look at the wreck of her palm. "Shit."

"At least it wasn't my gun hand," she rasps, watching the tremble of her hand and the bubble of seared skin. "Fuck this hurts." And it was going to hurt, because there wasn't really any way to treat it with what they had on hand.

"Any injury can compromise an entire operation if it's not taken care of," Marshall responds, eyes lifting to focus on her face. "You-"

Two things happen at once - a massive, person shaped fire crashes through the illusionary wall, screaming and flailing and sending all of them scattering. Marshall shoves her out of the way as the mass of flame and cinder leaps at them both, the hallucination shattering to reveal the entire warehouse burning around them.

_Point three and four on the 'list of bad things.'_

Gunfire rattles and someone -- Marshall, she realizes a second later -- is shouting, ordering that someone secure a way out. 

"The altered object is IN that person!" Jesse yells over the rage of the fire and the spontaneous thunder of rifles. "We have to contain them and get it out! If they get out into the city the damage will be bigger than just a warehouse!"

And if they didn't get out, the FBC would be short a Director and a few of it's best agents.

(Death was permanent outside The House after all-)

"There's no smoke," a ranger says, hovering by her, constantly scanning the blaze for their enemy while Jesse recovers. She pauses with that statement, feet underneath her, fingers of her unburnt hand splayed against the concrete.

The fire looks more like a mirage than a true blaze, flame licking high and guttering without spitting smoke that would otherwise making breathing even harder. 

"Still fucking hot," Jesse says, pushing up to stand. They didn't have long, the lack of smoke buying them a few precious seconds before the heat set in, before the fire burned through what oxygen was in the building and started crawling out the windows and consuming whatever else a spark would catch.

The fire screams, the person at the center of it crying and begging in a voice flayed by sparks. 

" _Please, God it hurts, Please!_ "

It takes them precious time to locate the center of the blaze, the heat of it settling over them like the suffocating shroud it was. For a moment it's a mix of terrifying and sad, seeing whoever this was kneeling in the middle of it all, freely burning and crying, screaming, begging for them to end it.

She feels bad for whoever this burning husk of a person was, forced into this whole situation through no fault of their own. Simply having been conned in to buying a dangerous object.

 _Where you curious?_ She thinks, watching as the rangers fail to put the fire out, over and over again the flames gutter but never extinguish. _Or are you the seller?_

_That makes this the final act of your hubris..._

" _Hand! My hand! Get it out get it_ -"

The person flounders, waving their hand at her. She notices it through the flicker of flame, the unblemished shine of metal.

_A lighter?_

Against her better judgement she goes for it, searing her already burned hand worse as she grabs hold on the lighter and pushes power into it, Polaris surging through in the struggle to subdue the object.

_It's like looking in a mirror if a mirror was a person, black rock and cinder, stars bursting through the ground and the sky above them in reds and whites--the figure before her is her but not, burned black and chipping away slowly on a breeze she couldn't see the source of--_

\------

**REGARDING THE [REDACTED] INCIDENT IN QUEENS, NEW YORK**

**\--CONFIDENTIAL--**

SUMMARY:

The [REDACTED] was contained and brought back to the FBC. Several agents, including Director Faden, sustained several burns, some severe. There was one civilian death related to the [REDACTED].

Reports lead agents to believe there was more than [REDACTED] in the warehouse but were unable to find them due to the fire. Agents explained suffering some kind of mass hallucination, Director Faden has since ordered further investigation into the incident and into possible other effects of [REDACTED]. 

The media and general populace has been lead to believe that a fire started in the warehouse due to an accident involving a staff member taking a smoking break and falling asleep too near a flammable object.

Compiled By Emily Pope, Head of Research

By Order Of Director Jesse Faden


	7. Hinging A Counterpoint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"--suspect is believed to be armed and incredibly dangerous, if seen contact authorities immediately--"_
> 
> _Bullshit, she thinks, sticking close behind Emily as the other woman weaves through the afternoon crowd. It's a small blessing that everyone is too busy trying to get from one place to another before the allotted 'two hour free time' ends and the daily scheduled dinner begins. The chaos of New York City is organized but still present, the flow of both people and traffic heading in one direction or another, never quite leading into a full on standstill._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 17 (Wrongfully Accused) Day 18 (Paranoia)
> 
> This is a preview for a coming project I'm working on, it's an Assassin's Creed AU.

The old library is silent, voices and movement muted by towering shelves stuffed full with books. Her handler sits across from her, face down turned at the laptop she has opened on the table in front of her, fingers swiftly moving across the keyboard. Jesse herself sits curled in her own chair, legs drawn up to her chest, hands stuffed in her pockets. 

She watches.

Her eyes flick between every person there, noting expressions and body language, reading the words their lips form as they speak to one another. It's all mundane bullshit like; 'how was your day?', 'hey did you read that new book?', 'it's nice to have the weather not be rainy for once.' In a corner a group of university students discuss a project that holds Jesse's interest for a scant moment longer than anyone else before her attention is drifting away again, rising up to the high shelves and the walkways above that other people move across. 

Across from her, the woman looks up from her laptop screen, blue eyes settling on her. "Do you see anything?" she asks, voice low. Jesse glances at her, with her perfectly styled hair and flawlessly pressed suit, and shrugs.

"No," she replies, chewing the inside of her lip. "It's all the same, Emily. Just a bunch of people doing a bunch of mundane things."

No templars or assassins in the mix, but they had come here expecting that, taking a wild swing in a vaguely clear direction and hoping. 

"I think this is a bust too," Jesse murmurs after a moment, slowly unfolding herself from her seat. "No use staying here, unless you wanna finish whatever it is you're doing on your laptop."

Emily blinks once, eyebrows raising in a vague sense of surprise before she looks down at her screen again. "I only need a few more minutes."

"Sure," Jesse replies, turning her attention back to the crowd. Nothing changes, and she watches each and every person who comes in or leaves, attention eventually drifting out to the sterile city outside. 

_It's all the same_ , she thinks, watching a news report flicker across one of the hundreds of holographic screens scattered throughout the city. _Like the inside of a hospital, just...everywhere. Cold, sterile, boring._

"The templars have no sense of taste do they?" she mutters, frowning. "I mean we're not even allowed to wear colors, what sort of idiot wants an entirely monochrome wardrobe?"

"Says the woman who wears mostly black," Emily says from behind her, fingers never pausing in their typing.

"Do you know how bad white _stains?_ " Jesse fires back, turning in her chair again. "In our line of work wearing white is a death sentence. I mean you wear gray all the time."

For a fleeting moment Emily looks up at her over the screen of her laptop again, a thin smile pulling at the edges of her lips. Jesse thinks that if she hadn't been looking at her she would have missed it, a tiny glimpse into the personality the other woman was forced to hide when they were outside like this.

There was no freedom here, just the illusion of it. 

_They dictate what we wear, how we speak, what our schedules are. Sure, everyone has health insurance and a roof over their head, has reasonable bills and the money to pay them and survive...but...how is this a way to live? Just the same thing everyday until we die._

She looks away again, resting her chin against the back of her chair. _We're only here because it's our allotted 'free time,'_ she thinks, frowning. _This isn't a life._

_I wonder how many people are discontent but too afraid to rise against this fucked up government._

"Em," she says, eyes fixating on the screen as dread makes itself at home in the pit of her stomach, coiling up into a sense of anxiety that could so quickly become another full blown panic attack. She sees herself staring back, her name and age and height all listed beside the picture of her. She looks half dead in it, eyes bruise rimmed and skin pale, the now scarred skin over the lower half of her face a fresh gash. "We gotta go."

Behind her Emily moves, the sound of her laptop clicking shut almost too loud in the suddenly too tense space. She feels as though people are watching even when a glance tells her no one in the library is paying attention to either of them. It doesn't soothe the itch at the back of her neck, doesn't stop her from clenching and unclenching her fists as her handler slings her bag over her shoulder so the two of them can leave.

Jesse pulls her hat low over her eyes as they head out front, flicking a glance up at the screen still running her information.

_"--suspect is believed to be armed and incredibly dangerous, if seen contact authorities immediately--"_

_Bullshit_ , she thinks, sticking close behind Emily as the other woman weaves through the afternoon crowd. It's a small blessing that everyone is too busy trying to get from one place to another before the allotted 'two hour free time' ends and the daily scheduled dinner begins. The chaos of New York City is organized but still present, the flow of both people and traffic heading in one direction or another, never quite leading into a full on standstill.

In the New York in Emily's books, this would be a clusterfuck. 

Right now? She's happy for the quick moving foot traffic, keeping her head down and never quite losing sight of the flutter of Emily's coat tails as they hurry along with everyone else. All they had to do was make it home before the patrol came through, or before some assassins clued in to what was going on and came combing about in the hopes she had been scared out of hiding somehow.

This was no way to live either; hunted by both sides because they believed she had some kind of connection to some important object they wanted.

She looks up at Emily in front of her still, half thankful and half angry at the FBC's intervention. Sure, they had rescued her from a much worse fate, but they also expected the same thing out of her.

To find this artifact.

A year ago she had no idea any of this existed. A year ago she was living her life from one day to the next, moving through without questioning the rules or her schedules.

Ten months ago she learned what it was like to live feeling the paranoia of constantly being watched, to understand what it was like to sit and want to scream while she worked through the adrenaline high of a mad flight for her life.

She never wanted this, yet here she was.


	8. Chronic Guilt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"All things that had become second nature to her over the years. She didn't want to feel flayed open in front of another person, didn't want to be on display in all her pain and her quiet depression. She didn't need someone else to pick over all of her open wounds, she had already done that just fine herself._
> 
> _'Survivor's Guilt' the therapist tells her, staring at her from across the small space they share. Jesse stares back, silent and aching, memories pulling like spider's silk at the back of her mind. She knows what it means immediately without the woman going into her clinical explanation."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 19 (Survivor's Guilt and a bit of Grief) and Day 21 (Chronic Pain)

There's something sobering about sitting in a room with another person and talking about her feelings, there's also something jarring about it, something that rattles in the back of her mind and makes the pain in her shoulder flare and burn. It makes her uncomfortable, it makes her feel vulnerable.

All things that had become second nature to her over the years. She didn't want to feel flayed open in front of another person, didn't want to be on display in all her pain and her quiet depression. She didn't need someone else to pick over all of her open wounds, she had already done that just fine herself.

_'Survivor's Guilt'_ the therapist tells her, staring at her from across the small space they share. Jesse stares back, silent and aching, memories pulling like spider's silk at the back of her mind. She knows what it means immediately without the woman going into her clinical explanation.

She feels guilty for surviving Ordinary, guilty for escaping when Dylan had been taken. She knows underneath it all it was her fault their parents, all the adults, were gone. She wants to laugh when the woman tells her no, it isn't her fault, none of it was her fault, because she knows the truth.

She knows and none of them will listen to her, dismissing her at every angle to the point she had started to give up, had started to lie to herself and think that maybe she really had some kind of wild nightmare. But the pain in her shoulder tells her otherwise. It keeps her up at night with it's spitfire throb and brings back the memories of the Not-Mother, of the creatures the neighborhood bullies had become.

Jesse can't escape those memories, those nightmares. She can't escape the guilt or the pain or the weight her choices carry. She doesn't want to, not when they keep her going forward, keep her driven to find out the truth of what happened to Dylan. She can't rest until she finds out where he was taken and what was done to him.

So she ignores the offers of potential medication and therapy to help her shoulder, she takes the advice however, smiling thinly and lying easily through her teeth when questioned.

She's fine, _she hates herself, but it's less now_. She'll manage, _because she has to, as hopeless as it feels she can't give up._

Polaris whispers.

Jesse leaps.

\------

It's a different kind of uncomfortable to be where she is now, sitting silently in a converted office with the prone from of her brother. Her shoulder still aches and she reaches up to rub it again for the millionth time since she hurt it back in Ordinary. She's gotten so used to it she isn't sure she'd know what to do without the ache there, finding the very action of trying to soothe away the chronic pain a kind of comfort.

"Some of the guilt is gone now," she whispers, smiling wryly. "Your hair is growing back," she says a little louder, looking at her brother. He hasn't stirred since the moment she brought him back, since the last few minutes of their frenzied reunion and confrontation.

She feels guilty for a different reason now, for not being fast enough, for not being good enough. 

For not arriving soon enough.

Distantly she knows all of that was out of her control. She also knows now that if she had allowed herself to be caught too, their situation could have gone even worse, or it could have gone better.

"Can't change the past," she says, leaning back in her chair. "If I had the option though I'm not sure how much I would have changed..."

At the same time, while she could have avoided all the trauma and the disaster she wouldn't have ever met all the people she had. She wouldn't have had the experiences she did or become the woman she was now, even if she was a little broken and a little awkward.

"Someone else would have found the Projector eventually anyway." And that, she knows, is a fact. If it hadn't been them, eventually some other person would have stumbled across it. "And that would have been just as bad, if not worse." The FBC still would have been overrun, but Jesse might not have been there to save it, however unwillingly at first.

She still carries with her all the guilt from before, but she's come to terms with it. 

She's made her peace with it and she supposes it's better than letting it weigh her down like it had been.

"Jesse?" Emily stands at the door when she looks over, one hand leaning against the frame. "Are you okay?"

"Yea," she says, standing up. "Just got a little lost in thought is all."

"Everyone's waiting," Emily says, straightening a little as Jesse approaches her, keen eyes watching the way Jesse rubs her shoulder again, rolling it slightly.

"Didn't mean to keep them," she replies, touching the other woman's bicep as she makes her way out of the make shift room. 

Emily follows her, humming low.


	9. Clockwork Glass Boxes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She thinks in words and in voices, she thinks she knows what she used to sound like when she was younger and knew how to get the shattered parts of her mind to work in conjunction with the other bits of her body that brought a voice forth._
> 
> _But she knows the scientists are wrong even if she can't ever correct them, she tries anyway with the nice blonde woman who spends a lot of time sitting outside her glass box, soft eyes and a kind voice. She speaks to her about things all the time, about projects, about news, asking her questions Jesse can't answer._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 22 (Drugged), Day 23 (Exhaustion/Sleep Deprivation) Day 24 (Forced Mutism) and Day 25 (Disorientation/Blurred Vision/Ringing Ears) all in one nice little package.
> 
> This is a pretty surreal fic that edges on some really dark themes so be warned when reading. It's an alternate take on _another_ in progress fic I have going.

The Projector took her voice away - at least, that's what the scientists that keep her in the glass box say, they tell her that whatever she experienced in there stole her words and scrambled the part of her brain where they form. So they never blame her whenever she tries and the broken pieces never pull together enough for her to say what she thinks.

She thinks in words and in voices, she thinks she knows what she used to sound like when she was younger and knew how to get the shattered parts of her mind to work in conjunction with the other bits of her body that brought a voice forth. 

But she knows the scientists are wrong even if she can't ever correct them, she tries anyway with the nice blonde woman who spends a lot of time sitting outside her glass box, soft eyes and a kind voice. She speaks to her about things all the time, about projects, about news, asking her questions Jesse can't answer.

She wants to answer, some part of her throat making a hollow humming noise that never makes it past a rasp. She wants to tell her about the voices in her mind that keep her scrambled up and disorientated, that make it impossible for her to think in just her own voice with her words and her desires to communicate them.

Jesse tries once, leaning her forehead and her hands against the glass while the nice Doctor watches her, eyebrows raised and surprise filtering through her too blue eyes. Jesse's jaw works and the noise that comes is a familiar hiss even as she rummages through the shattered bits to find what she needs.

Instead they reach down her throat until she chokes, filling her lungs and her mouth with their bloody ichor; tar and violence, something musty and incomprehensible that oozes between her grit teeth and leaves her reeling back from the wall. She chokes until she vomits, ichor spilling out across the floor like a violent oil slick, her shoulders heaving with every cough.

She can see Dylan in the cell over, beating against the wall in a desperate attempt to get to her. He's yelling but she can't hear the words, can't hear anything beyond the screaming ring in her ears and the dizzying blur of her vision.

Jesse can't breathe, fingers closing around her own throat in an attempt to remove their hold she distantly knows won't work. 

The doctor is shouting and more come in, a few flooding in through the door to her glass box. They grab her arms and her shoulders, voices a distorted whine that rises in pitch until she feels like her head might split. She thinks she's screaming, adding to the noise even when she wants it to stop.

_Could it even be considered a scream?_

She isn't sure what they give her, jerking as the needle slides into her skin, but it's nice to finally sleep.

It doesn't last and soon she's being pulled from it by them again, by their whispers and their touches, digging deep into the pools of her mind and plucking the shattered pieces out to throw them away.

_You don't need these. Or these._

**_Or these._ **

She's trapped in a state of half awareness, hearing and feeling but unable to move, to open her eyes. Whatever drugs they gave her sluicing through her bloodstream and leaving her incapacitated in a way the things in her head don't like. They want her awake and moving, want her to always be alert and attentive even when her eyes burn and all she wants to do is sleep.

Jesse hasn't known what it was like to sleep a full, restful night since the Projector, since the voices and the small things filled the hollows and constantly clamored for her attention. Always picking and pulling and rearranging. Her memories are never the same, never quite able to play right in the cycle of her nightmares.

She doesn't remember most of her childhood, can't remember her parents names or faces or what her hometown looked like in full. It's all in sharp shattered relief, scenes and moments pulled from the most traumatic points.

The dump, a cave, a fight at home with blurred faces and buzzing voices. 

"I don't understand her brain scan." The noise filters through, clear and edged. "It's...I don't know, like there's a bunch of holes. I'm amazed she can even move or function at all."

"It's likely to do with her being inside the Projector for so long, trapped in all those different realities. Something might have fused with her and come out with her which would explain her erratic behavior."

"What are we going to do then, Dr. Darling?" 

There's a thoughtful hum and she hears someone come closer before a warm hand falls on her forehead, large, masculine. 

"We have to try and help her."

_H e l p-_

She opens her eyes to the side of Dylan over her, cradling her to his chest, the rest of him curled around her protectively. She blinks but can't move otherwise, fingers and toes refusing to respond to her commands. 

Her brows furrow.

"Shh," Dylan mutters, kissing her temple. "They said it would take a bit for the drugs to work out of your system, so just try and rest for now okay?"

Something laughs in the back of her mind, high and chattering.

_You can't rest._


	10. Ways & Means

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _'Stranded' was not the ideal end to any mission, but somehow Jesse could add up all the reasons why this variation on it could probably check all the boxes on 'the worst possible mistake she's made in her life' list. Marshall would tell her that there was no way of knowing just how bad an AWE site could get, Emily would assure her that she had done everything in her power to make sure everyone that could have been saved was saved._
> 
> _Jesse would thinly disagree with both, she could have done more research, could have looked deeper into the experiment site through gentle prodding and contacts within other government branches. She could have done a lot of things, but it was past that point now and while she could continue to ruminate over her past mistakes and all the choices leading up to the current disaster they sat in the middle of, it wasn't going to help them get out of it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 26 (Migraine/Blindness), Day 27 (Extreme Weather), Day 28 ALT prompt 14 (Shot), Day 29 (Reluctant Bed rest), Day 30 (Ignoring an Injury/Wound Reveal) and Day 31 (Experiment)
> 
> This was a fun ride, I kind of wish I had started out October doing this instead of starting it in a week late but hey I finished a day late but not a dollar short.

' _Stranded_ ' was not the ideal end to any mission, but somehow Jesse could add up all the reasons why this variation on it could probably check all the boxes on 'the worst possible mistake she's made in her life' list. Marshall would tell her that there was no way of knowing just how bad an AWE site could get, Emily would assure her that she had done everything in her power to make sure everyone that could have been saved was saved.

Jesse would thinly disagree with both, she could have done more research, could have looked deeper into the experiment site through gentle prodding and contacts within other government branches. She could have done a lot of things, but it was past that point now and while she could continue to ruminate over her past mistakes and all the choices leading up to the current disaster they sat in the middle of, it wasn't going to help them get out of it.

She can hear Emily gingerly picking her way over fallen rubble behind her, can hear the noise of a busted light angrily spitting sparks somewhere out in the crumbling hallway, can hear Marshall as she speaks to one of the rangers making a report. 

But she can't see any of it. Hasn't been able to since she got caught in the shock wave of the explosion that brought half the building they were in now down.

None of them know she can't see, nor do any of them know about the bullet that had struck her in the side and made itself at home somewhere in the wall behind where she had been standing. She hadn't given any of them a chance to get close to notice either, giving out orders and keeping them on task while she suffered in silence.

Her side was on fire, and her head throbbed in beat with the too loud pound of her heart.

"Director," a ranger says, boots crunching over dust and chipped cement as he approaches her. "The storm outside hasn't let up, if anything it's gotten worse. We've done everything we can to reinforce this building so it hopefully won't come down on us but..."

"But?" she prods, eyebrows raising, head turning slightly in his general direction as she pretends to be focused on something else. The rain hammering the window outside, the sound of the wind tearing against the glass and rattling it faintly. She lifts a hand, pressing a finger to the chilled glass and frowns.

_This storm isn't natural_. She remembers the reports, all of them quietly crowded around a few monitors as an agent outside described the chaos she was looking at over the radio. A hurricane contained within a super-cell thunderstorm that had been beating on a single town out in the middle of nowhere America. 

They classified it as an AWE when the storm simply didn't stop and had found out several days later about the experiment someone had been rumored to be carrying out on site. Two firefights and a bomb later and here they were, kind of screwed.

(Okay, they were very screwed, but she was trying to be at least slightly optimistic.)

"But those people are still out there and we're sitting ducks until the storm has another one of it's lulls." And none of them knew when that might be, could be a few hours, could be a few days. That had been her first mistake, none of them fully understanding exactly what it was they were walking in to.

They hadn't realized the full scale of any of it until they were in the thick of it.

"Stagger patrols," she says, looking away from the window and in his general direction. "Make sure everyone gets a chance to rest while we wait this out, once we hit one of those lulls we're going to make a beeline straight for the facility in the center of town as fast as we can." 

She hears him salute, tilting her head to listen as he leaves, hearing the sound of his voice carry as he relays her orders. 

They had one shot at this. 

One.

And she was a liability.

Slowly she turns away from the window, splaying a hand out in front of her as she makes her way across the room step by step, sliding her boots in the dirt to find any rubble before she tripped over it. Her side twinges as she moves and she grimaces, pressing her palm against the wound.

"Jesse."

She stills, lifting her head and turning slightly in the direction of the familiar voice. "Emily," she says, unsure of exactly where the other woman was standing. She knew if anyone was going to find out what she had been hiding it was going to be her.

"What's wrong?" Emily asks, and the first step she takes helps Jesse zero in on exactly where she is, feigned focus stilling on the sound of the approaching body. "You're moving and acting weird."

"No weirder than I usually am," she replies, forcing a half smile. "Just a little jarred still from the explosion. I didn't expect these people to be actually packing military grade bombs. We're lucky whoever rigged it did it wrong."

They're even luckier to even be alive with only a few of them suffering injuries.

" _Jesse_ ," Emily says again, leaning more on the worry in her tone. She's closer now, close enough Jesse knows she'd be able to see the stained edge of her outfit no matter how well it hid the blood, knows that she'd probably be ale to tell that Jesse couldn't focus on her worth a damn no matter how well she faked it from a distance.

And she can't. She doesn't know exactly where her face is relative to the distance they're currently standing at, hell Jesse doesn't even know where in the fucking room she is now. She could have gone in the complete opposite direction from where she had wanted to go.

"Look at me," Emily says, and anxiety lances deep in Jesse's chest as she tries. She listens to the quiet noise of distress Emily makes when she fails, twitching her head back in surprise when warm hands find her cheeks. "You can't, can you?" Emily asks, thumbs brushing underneath her eyes. "You can't see."

"No," Jesse admits, blinking. "Not since the explosion. I figured it would clear up so I didn't say anything but...it hasn't yet." 

She didn't want any of them to be worrying about her when there was so much else to be concerned about.

"And this?" Emily asks, one hand retreating from her face to brush against the edges of the injury she had been ignoring. "Jesse...did you get shot?"

"Just a graze," Jesse lies, cringing when the other woman prods it. "Ow."

"That's not a graze," Emily replies. "I know just enough about gunshot wounds to know that's anything but a graze."

"It stopped bleeding?"

The sigh she gets is an exasperated one, the researcher seizing her arm and guiding her through the room and out into the hallway. She isn't sure where they're going until Emily is sitting her down on something and instructing her to take off her shirt. She does, slowly, peeling away the few layers of fabric to the wound underneath, gritting her teeth and hissing as the cloth pulls away from the wound.

"Jesus," Emily breathes. "Jesse how have you been ignoring this?"

"I don't know, I ignore a lot of things," Jesse replies, lifting her arm when she feels a hand direct her to, fingers agile and smooth where they slide against her skin.

Another sigh and this one makes her feel properly chastised, sinking slightly away from the direction she knows Emily is standing. "Sorry," she mumbles, turning her face away. 

"Marshall!" Emily calls and she listens to the noise of steps and shuffling boots, head canting slightly in small attempts to pin point where she is in location to the rest of the rangers. 

"What is it Pope?" Marshall asks from nearby, and Jesse can almost imagine the look the older woman casts through the room until her laser focus falls on where she sits. "Faden, you look like shit."

"Thanks," Jesse grouses, frowning. "I feel like shit too."

"I need the medical kit," Emily interjects. "And your help."

"Sure," Marshall replies, dirt grinding under her boots. "I'll be right back."

She hears Emily return, feels her as she touches her shoulder and her bicep and tells her to sit still as if sitting still was something Jesse could do with any amount of ease. She still twitches, toe tapping against the dirt, hand rubbing across the back of her neck.

Marshall returns a moment later, steps precise. "Here," she says, pauses. "Director."

Jesse looks up, but not in the proper direction and she knows it from the bit off "Shit," Marshall mutters under her breath. 

"She told me she hasn't been able to see since the explosion," Emily says, and Jesse feels weight sink beside her.

"I can still hear just fine, though," Jesse cuts in, smile wry. "But it's true, I got caught in the brunt of it and even with the shield I pulled up it...wasn't enough apparently."

"I'll take care of leading the team into the lab," Marshall says, shifting. "You're not going anywhere, Faden."

"But-"

"The wound is one thing, the fact that you can't see is another. You're a liability and even you know that, don't you?"

Jesse cringes, grimacing and lowering her head. "Yea. Alright."

A hand rests on-top of her head and Marshall sighs above her. "Rest, I'll take care of it as soon as the storm lulls and then we can go home."

"Right."

She sits as still as she can while Marshall and Emily take care of the hole in her side, struggling not to flinch or jerk away when the pain gets to be this side of too much. Emily stays with her when all is said and done, a hand resting against her sternum as Jesse lays with her head in her lap.

"You protected all of us at the expense of yourself again," Emily whispers, leaning down to press lips to her forehead. 

"What kind of leader would I be if I wasn't willing to protect the people working with me?" A bad one, a worse one than she already was. 

"I know, Jesse," Emily says, a quiet laugh hidden in the words. "I know."

Jesse listens to the team when they inevitably head out, Marshall very studiously claiming that Jesse would be leading the research team after they had cleared out the brunt of the hostilities. No moral lost.

She smirks to herself, lets herself drift.

There was nothing to do but sleep while they waited.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/modulatechaos)


End file.
